July 19, 2008

On Lake Nockamixon

(shot with Sony DSC S85 and Sony DSC-P200)
(view other photo essays)

The first thing I discovered, recently, was that the supersaturated pixel on my Sony S85 camera was able to heal itself. I left it for a few months without a battery and in time, the surplus stored charge dissipated. Yay! But the P200 is smaller, lighter, takes much larger pictures faster and (most importantly), it covers its own lens when not in use! (Still didn't prevent this set of pictures from recording a few water spots, though... It has been a typically hazy, hot and humid Philadelphia summer and Saturday, the 19th, proved no exception. I could swelter in the city or take my chances under the pounding sun on a bathwater-warm lake. What a nice surprise to find a healthy breeze blowing and real refreshment on the water!

I pre-arranged to meet friend Steve Smith at the lake,
and loaded the yellow Kestrel and the mango Tsunami into
mis-matched roof racks.
Note the fresh paint on the front of my house!


I just had all the exposed woodwork painted:
Base-coat of white with color accents in a representative,
if not authentic, victorian/federalist pattern.



And here's my car and boats at the Tohickon boat ramp
at Lake Nockamixon. I hadn't realized before how different in
size the two 12' long boats were! The Tsunami displaces quite a
bit more water than the Kestrel does.



At this time of the day (about 1:15pm), there were very few people
out at the lake. Function of the heat, I guess. But by the time
Steve had to leave (3:30), the place was crawling with sail boarders
catamarans and light sailboats.



It was a refreshing surprise to find a cooling breeze blowing up the lake.
The breeze kicked up a rhythmic succession of waves that introduced
some challenging new dynamics to our paddle.



Herons abound in this relatively shallow area of the lake and the
P200's 7 Megapixels + zoom brought me closer than ever to these
intriguing birds.






There was also a flotilla of young duckies, still under the
careful guidance of their ma. Soon enough, they would be
smoking cigarettes and loitering around down at the mall
like all the other adolescents.





Here is poor Steve Smith, forced to wear a float vest two sizes too large
for him. There's a more appropriately sized one in the trunk of my car,
somewhere...



This picture and the next are actually the same shot of a heron in flight
just cropped differently.






As long as we headed downwind, we managed to get places. But when we turned
up the lake toward the marina and had to fight the waves, it was like
paddling on a treadmill.



After nearly an hour of constant paddling, threading in and out of
sail boarders having their way with the winds,
we were still half a mile from the marina.



Here are Smith and heron together in the same picture, in case
you thought I was pulling some kind of bait and switch.



And here's a blue dragonfly that hitched a ride on my boat.
Usually, these critters dart around and copulate in mid-air with abandon.
This one stayed glued to my Tsuanmi's deck so long, I though it must surely
have died there. But eventually, it unfolded its wings and took off again.



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